Cartoonists get animated in D.C.

What do you get when some of the country’s most accomplished editorial cartoonists descend on Washington with less than seven weeks left in the presidential race?

Countless caricatures of the candidates, for one. But also disagreements about whether certain illustrations of President Barack Obama are racist — and grumbles about what a cliché it is to depict Mitt Romney as a robot.

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At the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists’ annual three-day convention last weekend, co-hosted by George Washington University and led by POLITICO’s Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, Matt Wuerker, panelists held highly animated discussions about the evolving role of cartooning in politics and its fight for survival in the digital age.

They also addressed how illustrating the 2012 election differs from other White House races.

“A lot of cartoonists are lazy,” Los Angeles Times cartoonist Ted Rall said at a lunch session. Cartoonists who drew Barack Obama four years ago simply “took racial stereotypes and ran with it,” he added.

But former AAEC President Steve Kelley of the New Orleans Times-Picayune said those illustrations of the then-Illinois senator were fine.

“There’s nothing wrong with using the color of Obama’s skin,” he said. “A lot of readers will infer racism because they don’t like the message of the cartoon. Readers walk around with biases that overtake their rational side.”

Mitt Romney’s campaign has kept cartoonists busy this election season. Latino satire and comedy website Pocho.com’s Lalo Alcaraz said compared with 2004, when “[John] Kerry was a snooze, Romney is like the gift that keeps on giving.”

Some, however, have burned out on cartoons of empty chairs and dogs on top of cars, and they’re ready to go back to their drawing boards to focus on something other than the election. Daily Kos’s award-winning cartoonist Dan Perkins, known by his pen name, Tom Tomorrow, told POLITICO that the election’s “home stretch gets a little tedious.”

“It’s such a cliché to draw Romney as a robot,” Perkins said. “Everyone is focusing on [the election], so there’s no finding that interesting, odd angle, and there’s not that much to say. We know who these two guys are.”

And yet, cartoonists “are almost expected to do every cartoon” about the race.

“I’ll just be glad when that’s over,” he added, “because I’d like to focus on more systemic issues.”